Arroyo’s father, Diosdado P. Macapagal, was president of the Philippines from 1961 to 1965. Arroyo studied economics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she began a lasting friendship with classmate and future U.S. president Bill Clinton. After returning to the Philippines and graduating magna cum laude from Assumption College in Manila in 1968, Arroyo earned a master’s degree in economics (1978) from Ateneo de Manila University and a doctorate in economics (1986) from the University of the Philippines in Quezon City.

Arroyo was a university professor when Pres. Corazon Aquino appointed her undersecretary of trade and industry in 1986. She won a seat in the Senate in 1992 and was reelected in 1995 by a record 16 million votes. She was elected vice president in 1998, garnering more votes than the winner of the presidency, Joseph Estrada, who named Arroyo secretary of social welfare and development. In 2000, however, a corruption scandal enveloped Estrada, and on October 12 Arroyo resigned from the cabinet post to rally opposition against him. Angry protesters drove Estrada from the presidential residence on January 20, 2001, and Arroyo assumed power.

Arroyo brought an unprecedented academic and administrative background to the Philippines presidency, but her tenure was plagued by political unrest. Just months after she took office, some 20,000 supporters of Estrada stormed the gates of the presidential palace. Several people were killed, and Arroyo declared a “state of rebellion” that lasted five days. In 2003 disaffected soldiers seized a Manila apartment building and demanded Arroyo’s resignation; the attempted coup was suppressed peacefully. Promising to reduce corruption and improve the economy, Arroyo was reelected president in 2004. However, accusations that she rigged the election emerged the following year and resulted in a failed attempt at impeachment. In 2006 Arroyo declared a countrywide state of emergency after a military coup was blocked; the state of emergency was lifted after about one week. Terrorism was also a concern for Arroyo’s administration. Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group that sought a separate Islamic state in the southern Philippines, was responsible for a number of attacks, including the 2004 bombing of a ferry that killed more than 100 people.

In late 2009, after members of a politically powerful clan in Mindanao were implicated in the massacre of a political opponent and his entourage there, Arroyo briefly declared martial law in the region. She also renounced ties with the clan, which until then had been a political ally. Constitutionally barred from seeking another six-year presidential term, she ran for and won a seat in the House of Representatives in the May 2010 presidential and parliamentary elections. Arroyo subsequently was investigated for various alleged crimes, and in 2011 the government barred her from leaving the country to seek medical treatment. In November she was arrested on charges of having committed electoral fraud during the 2007 Senate election. She pleaded not guilty to those charges in February 2012. However, the following month, new allegations were brought that stated that she and her husband had accepted bribes from a Chinese telecommunications company in 2007. She was released from custody on bail in July 2012. Later that year Arroyo was arrested for allegedly misusing state lottery funds while president.

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